Towards the River’s Mouth (Verso la foce), by Gianni Celati

A Critical Edition

Edited and translated by Patrick Barron - Introduction by Patrick Barron - Contributions by Marina Spunta; Monica Seger; Rebecca West; Matteo Gilebbi; Serenella Iovino; Michele Ronchi Stefanati; Damiano Benvegnù; Thomas Harrison; Massimo Rizzante and Franco Arminio

Italian writer and filmmaker Gianni Celati’s 1989 philosophical travelogue Towards the River’s Mouth explores perception, memory, place and space as it recounts a series of journeys across the Po River Valley in northern Italy. The book seeks to document the “new Italian landscape” where divisions between the urban and rural were being blurred into what Celati terms “a new variety of countryside where one breathes an air of urban solitude.” Celati traveled by train, by bus, and on foot, at times with photographer Luigi Ghirri, at others exploring on his own without predetermined itineraries, taking notes on the places he encountered, watching and listening to people in stations, fields, bars, houses, squares, and hotels. In this way the book took shape as Celati traveled and wrote, gathering and rewriting his notes into “stories of observation” (9). Celati attempts to find meaning by seeking the uncertain limits of our ability to discern everyday surroundings. “Every observation,” as he puts it, “needs liberate itself from the familiar codes it carries, to go adrift in the middle of all things not understood, in order to arrive at an outlet, where it must feel lost.”

At the forefront of the then-nascent spatial turn in the humanities, Towards the River’s Mouth is a key text of what in recent years has been variously termed literary cartography, literary geography, and spatial poetics. Its call to carefully and affectionately examine our surroundings while attempting to step back from habitual ways of perceiving and moving through space, has resonated as much with literary scholars and other writers as with geographers and architects. By now a classic of twentieth-century Italian literature, it has in recent years garnered increasing attention, especially with the growth of ecocriticism and new materialism within the environmental humanities.

This edition, translated into English for the first time, features an introduction that places Towards the River’s Mouth in the context of Celati’s other work, and a selection of ten scholarly essays by prominent figures in comparative literature and Italian studies.

Lexington Books

Pages: 236 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-6601-8 • Hardback • December 2018 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-4985-6602-5 • eBook • December 2018 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / Italian, Literary Criticism / Modern / 20th Century, Literary Criticism / Popular Literature

Towards the River’s Mouth (Verso la foce), by Gianni Celati

A Critical Edition

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Italian writer and filmmaker Gianni Celati’s 1989 philosophical travelogue Towards the River’s Mouth explores perception, memory, place and space as it recounts a series of journeys across the Po River Valley in northern Italy. The book seeks to document the “new Italian landscape” where divisions between the urban and rural were being blurred into what Celati terms “a new variety of countryside where one breathes an air of urban solitude.” Celati traveled by train, by bus, and on foot, at times with photographer Luigi Ghirri, at others exploring on his own without predetermined itineraries, taking notes on the places he encountered, watching and listening to people in stations, fields, bars, houses, squares, and hotels. In this way the book took shape as Celati traveled and wrote, gathering and rewriting his notes into “stories of observation” (9). Celati attempts to find meaning by seeking the uncertain limits of our ability to discern everyday surroundings. “Every observation,” as he puts it, “needs liberate itself from the familiar codes it carries, to go adrift in the middle of all things not understood, in order to arrive at an outlet, where it must feel lost.”

At the forefront of the then-nascent spatial turn in the humanities, Towards the River’s Mouth is a key text of what in recent years has been variously termed literary cartography, literary geography, and spatial poetics. Its call to carefully and affectionately examine our surroundings while attempting to step back from habitual ways of perceiving and moving through space, has resonated as much with literary scholars and other writers as with geographers and architects. By now a classic of twentieth-century Italian literature, it has in recent years garnered increasing attention, especially with the growth of ecocriticism and new materialism within the environmental humanities.

This edition, translated into English for the first time, features an introduction that places Towards the River’s Mouth in the context of Celati’s other work, and a selection of ten scholarly essays by prominent figures in comparative literature and Italian studies.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 236 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-6601-8 • Hardback • December 2018 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-4985-6602-5 • eBook • December 2018 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / Italian, Literary Criticism / Modern / 20th Century, Literary Criticism / Popular Literature

Author

Patrick Barron is associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the author of Terrain Vague: Interstices at the Edge of the Pale.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction, Patrick Barron

Towards the River’s Mouth, Gianni Celati

1“Gianni Celati’s Towards the River’s Mouth: The Experience of Place between Writing and Photography,” Marina Spunta

2“Sight, Language, Time: To be Surrounded by the World,” Monica Seger

3“Gianni Celati’s Strada Provinciale delle anime: A ‘Silent’ Film About ‘Nothing,’” Rebecca West

4“The Posthuman Imagination of Gianni Celati’s Cinema,” Matteo Gilebbi

5“Restoring the Imagination of Place: Narrative Reinhabitation and the Po Valley,” Serenella Iovino

6“Forms of Impegno in Towards the River’s Mouth,” Michele Ronchi Stefanati

7“Witnessing the Po River: Disorientation and Estrangement in Primo Levi and Gianni Celati,” Damiano Benvegnù
8“A Tale of Two Giannis: Writing as Rememoration,” Thomas Harrison

9“Walking in the Open Enchanted by the Overheard: Two Reflections on Towards the River’s Mouth,” Massimo Rizzante

10“Introduction to Paesology,” Franco Arminio

Index

About the Contributors

Reviews

Gianni Celati is one of Italy’s principal contemporary authors, and one of the world’s leading ecological writers. His “Toward the River’s Mouth,” in the crisp and fluid translation by Patrick Baron, explores the deterioration of the physical and social landscapes of the Po Valley. The literary text, consisting of four travel diaries or “stories of observation,” is accompanied by lucid essays by some of the foremost Italian scholars of the environmental humanities and eco-criticism.
— John P. Welle, University of Notre Dame

Patrick Barron’s timely English translation and critical edition of Gianni Celati’s Verso la foce is an inspired and remarkable accomplishment. To open this book is like being affectionately escorted along the Po Valley countryside with a group of old friends and simultaneously taking a journey along the misty paths of one's own soul. Barron’s informative introduction and the accompanying critical essays skillfully guide us through these multidimensional physical and emotional landscapes. An important and most welcome work.
— Enrico Cesaretti, University of Virginia

Largely uncelebrated and mostly unknown, Italy’s great river Po and its delta are the backdrop for Gianni Celati’s musings about land and life. Here lie reclaimed marshlands alongside abandoned factories where scattered farmhouses disappear behind windblown hedges. We see how this broad river flowing to the sea, braided here and diked there, often abused and always vulnerable, continues to nurture the human spirit. Patrick Barron’s sensitive translation joined with critical assessments of Celati’s work allow us to explore some of Italy’s least beaten pathways.
— Marcus Hall, University of Zurich

Gianni Celati’s Towards the River’s Mouth meanders through the hybrid landscapes of the vast Po River Valley, voicing stories at times cosmic in scope, at others painstakingly local. Patrick Barron’s elegant translation flows with the energy and grace of the river. His introduction and the accompanying essays by leading scholars of literature, philosophy, posthumanism, and the environmental humanities frame Celati’s poetic stories, situating them in vibrant intellectual and geographic contexts and creating convivial dialogues with other texts and traditions. This critical edition is an invaluable resource for scholars and students, and a joy to read.
— Elena Past, Associate Professor of Italian, Wayne State University